wfn.org | "Sustainable Development"

[PCUSA_NEWS@ecunet.org]

Date: 13-Jun96 
 
96222              General Assembly Backgrounder:  
                      "Sustainable Development" 
 
                         by Julian Shipp 
 
     A major church policy paper titled "Hope for a Global Future: Toward 
Just and Sustainable Human Development" is being presented to the 208th 
General Assembly by the denomination's Advisory Committee on Social Witness 
Policy (ACSWP). 
 
     This 100-page document examines the social, economic and ecological 
effects of U.S.  international economic policies on the world's poorest 
nations and recommends direction for reform. 
 
     The paper looks at such problems as overconsumption, overpopulation, 
poverty, pollution and inequitable distribution of resources and explores 
how development can meet present needs without exhausting the resources 
needed by future generations. 
 
     ACSWP appointed a task group to develop the paper in 1991. Since then 
task group members have examined the social, economic, and ecological 
effects of America's international policies on the world's poorest nations 
and peoples. Additionally, the group has met on several occasions to 
evaluate these policies and propose appropriate directions for reform. 
 
     According to task group chairperson James Kuhn, a Presbyterian elder 
and retired business professor from Columbia University in New York, the 
document has a global focus and takes a go-for-broke approach in addressing 
the world's problems because it is centered around the notion that human 
beings will "either accomplish sustainability together or not at all." 
 
     Kuhn said experts in theology, business, government, sociology and 
other related fields were consulted during the creation of the paper. For 
example, in February of 1993, the group met for eight days in Honduras, the 
second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere for on-site experience and 
study. 
 
     Representatives of 15 PC(USA) synods met last fall in Louisville, Ky., 
to discuss and critique the paper before it was submitted to ACSWP. While 
some representatives criticized the report for being too lengthy, they 
praised the report in several areas. 
 
     They supported the paper's emphasis on overconsumption as a prophetic 
word to the majority of people in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and 
America, its finding that women are among the poorest of the world's poor 
and its insistence on the need for equal justice among the world's rich and 
poor. 
 
(Julian Shipp will be covering sustainable development for the General 
Assembly Newsroom.) 

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